


batten down the hatches before we all drown

by jadeddiva



Series: sign your name across my heart [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 11:43:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadeddiva/pseuds/jadeddiva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma Swan breaks him and makes him a better man in ways he never thought he’d know.  Hook, after the Echo Cave.  Post 3x06, spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	batten down the hatches before we all drown

It’s the breath he takes between the moment Emma grabs her sword and the moment she steps onto the (magically-conjured) rock bridge – it’s that breath, not the ones after he admits his secret or the ones that happen later – that breaks him.  It’s a small crack, just a hairline fracture in the grand scheme of everything that has happened to him, both as Killian Jones and as Hook, but he’s seen it often enough with his ship to know what happens next.

First a crack, which will widen with time and wear, growing larger until your mast fails in the midst of a fierce storm, or your boot gets caught in the deck when the boards below you buckle.  One scenario is far more embarrassing, the other more deadly, but Hook feels like this crack is both at once.

He is the last to leave the cave, and the first to start carving out a new path in the jungle.  He knows that Snow and Charming are following him, and he glances behind to see Baelfire – _Neal, she calls him Neal_ \- and Emma talking.  He can make out some words about Neal fighting for Emma, but he turns away again.   The crack within him throbs, and he worries that it may grow, so he tries to focus on the task at hand: Henry.

There are enough lost boys in Neverland already.

The progress through the jungle is quiet, and he struggles to collect his thoughts.  He’s come out on the other side of Pan’s challenges, first choosing to stay and not run off with Emma and then getting her to Neal.  He’s done everything that Pan’s wanted and everything that he never would have thought himself capable of, since he started on the wrong side of things to begin with.  Switching allegiances midway has always been his specialty but now, even when it’s the right side, there’s still a bad taste in his mouth.

They make camp near a rock wall, and Emma starts the fire easily now that Regina’s helped her practice (that, or it might just be the anger that she feels that he doesn’t really want to know about).  Neal flutter around hers, unsure of what to do, and Hook can’t blame him.   Emma’s declaration of love and despair is not the sort of declaration any man would want to hear (not like his was anything but awkward but it served its purpose). There is definite tension between Snow and Charming now that they know Charming can’t leave the island, so Hook chooses to look for firewood. 

And if he strays far from the camp, far enough that he can’t see the flames of the fire or hear their voices as they rise and fall, then it’s all the better.

Hook finds a log and sits on it, drawing out his flask, but he doesn’t drink.  He stares at the flask instead, and puts it back.  Instead, he rests his head in his hands, half-expecting Pan to return to torment him over his losses.

The part of him that mourned Milah for so long wants it – wants to revel in the pain that he feels because of his life choices, all of which lead him back here to a dark jungle with darker motives.  It’s that part, the part that considers himself Captain Hook above all else, that wants to soothe his wounds by getting blackout drunk. He wants to forget that the boy that he saved all those years ago grew up to be the man who can take everything away from him.

The other part of him, the one he wants to be again so badly, the part of him that still is Killian Jones, knows that you can’t lose something that isn’t yours.  That part of him knows that what he did was right, was a step back on the right path that he strayed from so long ago when he lost Liam, and again when he lost Milah.   And sometimes, the right thing is the only thing to do regardless of the consequences (good form, and all that).

There is a battle raging within him constantly over the man he was, and the man he became, and the man he wants to be again.

There is rustling in the undergrowth and he knows it’s not Pan – the demon wouldn’t be so obvious – and so he guesses that one of them has come to find him.  He bends over as if reaching for stick, because the last thing he wants any of them to see is him more vulnerable than he already is (bad form, and all that).  He straightens, spies another piece of firewood in further away from the movement.

“Hook.”

_Of course it’s her._

“Not sure you’ll need this,” he tells Emma, turning slightly so that he can see her out of the corner of his right eye, “with your newfound powers and all, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.”

“I know that trick too,” Emma says, drawing close to him.  “Foster parents fight so you lock yourself in your room and pretend you’ve been doing homework with your headphones on all along.”  She shoves her hands in her back pockets and looks at him.

“I don’t understand a word that came out of your mouth,” he tells her, even though he gets the general idea.  “I’m trying to be helpful,” he tells her, because he wants to tell her he feels like Regina once felt, the odd one out, the one that everyone is apprehensive of.  He misses the evil hag because now that she’s gone, no amount of his good intentions will change the fact that he was a villain before he tried to save the day.  “Is there any reason that you are out here –“ the word _love_ freezes on his lips – “escaping something too?”  His play at witty banter isn’t working, and he feels even his words fall flat because his heart just isn’t into it.

It’s into her, beautiful and lost in the moonlight, and he feels another crack grow from the first. 

“Thank you,” she says.  “For – “

“It’s no matter.” Hook turns away, grabbing a large piece of wood.  He can tell that she wants to have some sort of conversation about what happened and he doesn’t want to hear it – doesn’t want to hear apologies or stammering about how it was just a kiss, doesn’t want to think about how she’s the most amazing thing he’s ever seen, blonde hair glowing softly in the moonlight, fierce in her love of her family.   If he turns and heads towards camp, then he won’t have to have this conversation.

“It matters to me,” she starts, and he brushes past her.  He is going back towards camp, he will go and they will save her son, and then maybe the cracks will mend themselves.

She stops him with a hand on his arm – his left arm, his hook arm, the arm closest to her.

“I don’t know what to tell you.” He can feel the heat from her hand searing through the leather and he remembers their kiss, her hands griping his collar and pulling him closer, the feeling of his hand in her hair, the way that she was breathless afterwards and how he wanted, more than anything else, to believe that kiss meant something to her other than just a kiss.

“Thanking me was sufficient, but there was no need.”  He doesn’t move, just lets her hand rest on his arm.  He looks over at her, then away, her eyes so big and blue in the moonlight that he cannot, he _cannot –_ “It was the right thing to do, Emma, and it might come as some surprise to you but sometimes I do choose the right thing.”

His self-deprecation tastes bitter on his tongue but he doesn’t want to tell her that love makes you do crazy things – things that rip you in two and break you into pieces but are worth it if they save the person you care about most.

Her grip on his arm tightens.  “I know that – Hook.”  She hesitates when she says his name, and he laughs, a small sharp laugh.

“Killian.  That’s who I was, before.”  Before Liam and Neverland and Milah and Emma, before right and wrong blurred, when he always got what he wanted.

He could kiss her again now, they’re so close, her hand still on his arm.  He wants to, but he doesn’t, because he doesn’t know what he wants (he knows what Hook wants, and what Killian wants, but what about this brave new soul he may very well be right now?). 

“Killian.”  Emma’s voice is soft, and he looks at her again, risking it all.  He smiles, and she smiles, and there is a moment between them that he wants to last forever and ever.

But there is more movement in the underbrush – Neal or David, probably looking for their lost girl, and he breaks contact, moves his arm.  Emma takes a step back, then looks around as if she, too, is searching for firewood. 

It is David, not Neal, that is headed towards them, apparently also eager to get away from camp.

Sometime later, when they are gathered around the fire, with Neal sitting near Emma and Hook as far away as possible, he catches her looking at him.  More than once, eyes wide, face concerned or thoughtful (he can never tell with her) she is looking at him when she thinks he is not looking.  And he is looking at her when she looks at Neal.

Inside of him, the cracks threaten to grow, and he wonders just how much of this he can reasonably take before he is utterly and completely destroyed.  Or maybe he will rise, a phoenix from the ashes, a better man than he was before.

At least he will know it is his love for her that makes him better, and that may very well be enough.

 


End file.
